The title is catchy and positive: "Smart, Skilled, and Striving: Transforming and Elevating the Teaching Profession." It sounds like a teacher-friendly approach to improving the perceptions and experiences of teachers working in classrooms. However, this report published by the Center for American Progress uses popular rhetoric and sound…

Valid, scientific research is critical for ascertaining the effects of instructional techniques on learners with disabilities and for guiding effective special education practice and policy. Researchers in fields such as psychology and medicine have identified serious and widespread shortcomings in their research literatures related to replication…

Coburn and Turner (this issue) present an intriguing framework for understanding how data has come to be used in the current high accountability environments in education. In this framework, they connect various processes of data use within organizational and political contexts. Data use is presented using an ecological perspective that deepens…

The best available evidence is one of the three critical features of evidence-based practice. Best available evidence is often considered to be synonymous with extremely high standards for research methodology. However, this notion may limit the scope and impact of evidence based practice to those educational decisions on which high quality…

Explains why definition of action research is problematic and presents working definitions developed internationally that indicate its nature, philosophy, and methodology. Suggests that pragmatic approaches to definition serve communication purposes without narrowly confining the concept. (SK)

It is not likely that the schools as presently organized and conducted and with the prevailing model of change employed for their improvement can be redesigned to meet satisfactorily the wide and varied range of expectations for them. The schools are suffering from a confusing array of expectations and a crippling overload of functions. Our…

It is possible to devise ingenious means for adapting basic methodological techniques to meet exigencies of the research situation while still meeting the requirements for the collection of valid data. (Author/AM)

Asserts that graduate training, as well as the policies of journals and granting agencies, supports an approach to research that promotes scientific understanding but does not produce effective clinical treatment. (Author/JM)

The author examines, in the light of funding problems for Federal agencies supporting educational research, the difficulties inherent in the research process as it now exists, and methods for attacking these difficulties. The thought is presented that only by working on these general problems, will the more specific problem of funding be…

Research adaptation is an endeavor that implies solid collaboration among school practitioners and university and college researchers. This volume addresses the broad issues of research as an educational endeavor, adaptation as a necessary function associated with applying research findings to school situations, and change as an inevitable…

Researchers are becoming increasingly aware of context variables in interpreting research findings. The Procedures for Adopting Educational Innovations (PAEI) Project at the Texas Research and Development Center for Teacher Education has been attempting to identify and conceptualize important research-based and clinical-based context variables. An…

These technical appendices are bound separately from the report "Strategies for Knowledge Use and School Improvement" which evaluates the National Institute of Education's Research and Development Utilization (RDU) program. Appendix A contains a preliminary report on the statistical quality of the quantitative data, focusing primarily on…

Results from a project of linked alumni and employer surveys at North Carolina State University were analyzed to explore the comparability of the ratings. A survey of administrators was subsequently undertaken to explore the impact of survey-based assessment information on planning, assessment, curriculum revision, and customer satisfaction at the…

The erosion of the credibility of the classical diffusion paradigm by recent challenges to its fundamental assumptions has resulted in a "paradigmatic crisis" as related to research on the diffusion of agricultural innovations. Such basic assumptions as that of a harmonious and cooperative society and of agricultural research guided by endogenous…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress studies selected research efforts in the agriculture, economics, and health fields to discover successful strategies for the dissemination and adoption of educational research. Interviews were conducted with people familiar with the Agricultural Extension Movement, Health Examination Interview…